Small newsagents often had a revolving rack of cheap LPs, generally along the lines of Top of the Pops Volume 25 and others on the Hallmark label, although I did once find an "export" Decca copy of the Rolling Stones' Out of Our Heads with the alternative cover and track listing from the US release of that name.

Even I cannot remember Boots' library book service which I first became aware of when Celia Johnson is seen using it in Brief Encounter.

I remember going to Woolworths in Folkestone in 1971 when they were having a massive clear out sale of mono albums for 75p each. No-one wanted the mono's because they weren't as good as the stereo's. Hah! I remember buying "Arthur" by The Kinks and wishing I had the money to buy "The Who Sell Out" and "Village Green", also by The Kinks. (I got them a bit later, but...)

There was also a great stall on Church Street market off the Edgware Road, just like the one Andy describes, where you could get ex-juke box and return stock singles for 30p - and mono albums for £1 or £1.25. Oh...............

A supermarket, long gone, called 'Fine Fare' in Crosby once got in a stock of LPs which had been lingering in a storeroom for at least 10 years and were being sold at some ridiculous prices, thus I came to have records by Arthur Brown, The Idle Race and John Surman in my first collection. Completely unfashionable (when fashion meant much, this was about 1975) but a treasure trove for youthful curiosity.

NormanD wrote:Marks & Spencer also sold its own brand LPs, though I can't remember what any of them were. I am sure that there was actually a Jimi Hendrix LP amongst their releases, on the St. Michael label.

You know, crappy rip-off Hendrix albums almost deserves a thread to itself! Those awful Curtis Knight and Lonnie Youngblood sessions and those even more awful Mike Ephron sessions were recycled so many times on so many different labels, always with completely misleading artwork and sometimes downright lies in the liner notes. Poor Jimi...

(Actually the Lonnie Youngblood sessions were not so bad, it's just that there weren't enough tracks to fill up an album so they were often padded out with rank forgeries.)

Jude wrote:HMV, Woolworth's, Boots and WH Smiths were all places you could buy fairly odd records, it depended on the managers of the shops and their level of interests in what they were selling. Plus there was Musicland where my late husband Simon worked and who, I think, were behind the shop he set up in Portobello Road, 'Simon's Stable', where the most esoteric and strange imports were to be found. And at the same time most of the rock musicians and industry people would congregate to listen and buy new music from him. Alvin Lee, Marc Bolan, BP Fallon, Quintessence, the Floyd and many more were all customers and many became friends, because he had such weird and wonderful records to play. Not sure it ever made much of a profit though :-)At least so I am told.., I didn't meet him till later

Jude wrote:HMV, Woolworth's, Boots and WH Smiths were all places you could buy fairly odd records, it depended on the managers of the shops and their level of interests in what they were selling. Plus there was Musicland where my late husband Simon worked and who, I think, were behind the shop he set up in Portobello Road, 'Simon's Stable', where the most esoteric and strange imports were to be found. And at the same time most of the rock musicians and industry people would congregate to listen and buy new music from him. Alvin Lee, Marc Bolan, BP Fallon, Quintessence, the Floyd and many more were all customers and many became friends, because he had such weird and wonderful records to play. Not sure it ever made much of a profit though :-)At least so I am told.., I didn't meet him till later